Proton says not so fast “Team Lotus”
In an interesting turn of event, Proton is ready to take Tony Fernandes to task over the rights to use the name “Team Lotus” in Formula 1.
Last week, F1B covered Lotus Team Principal Tony Fernandes’s announcement that they had bought the rights to the “Team Lotus” name from David Hunt and will rename Lotus Formula 1 to Team Lotus for 2011. Okay fine, Team Lotus is the name that ever F1 Lotus endeavor has raced under so it makes sense from a marketing perspective that they’d want to change their name.
Now this morning, the Group Lotus parent company Proton has stated a) not so fast, b) that they are prepared to take all the necessary steps to keep the Team Lotus name out of Fernandes’s hands, c) that what Fernandes bought from David Hunt is pretty much meaningless, d) oh and they’re pulling all support from the team.
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It appears that Group Lotus wants to start an F1 team of their own instead of going along with Fernandes, hence the battle for the “Team Lotus” name. Fernandes, on the other hand, doesn’t want two “Lotus” teams showing up on the grid in the near future so he’s trying to buy the name and keep Proton from using it. I also think F1B reader F1 Kitteh is on to something in the previous post: (paraphrasing) The team used to be Team Malaysia and now they’re not so Proton wants out. F1 Kitteh suggests the Fernandes and Mike Gascoyne are smart enough to figure out that being associated with Malaysia is a handicap and not an asset so they need to keep it English, hence Team Lotus.
So what do you think? Me, I think the backroom world of F1 just got a little more interesting…
The full press release can be found here.
